Is your company on the hunt for out-of-this-world business concepts? ESA is placing details of all its intellectual property rights online, aiming to promote the commercialisation of these patents in terrestrial contexts.

The new website, undertaken by ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme Office (TTPO), includes descriptions of the intellectual property rights (IPR) in question, their innovations and advantages, and their potential market applications.

The thriving space cluster at the UK’s Harwell Oxford science and innovation campus received a significant boost following the launch of ESA’s fifth Business Incubation Centre (BIC) in December 2010.

The launch was marked at a special joint event for both ESA BIC Harwell and the new International Space Innovation Centre, attended by ESA’s Director of Science, Mr David Southwood and Keith Mason, the Chief Executive of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Technology developed with ESA funding may soon be helping keep hospital patients around the world safe from infections.

Using superheated gases with an electrical charge, known as plasmas, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics director Gregor Morfill is developing ways to kill bacteria and viruses that can cause infections in hospitals.

“What we have with plasma is the possibility to supplement our own immune system and supplement the action of antibiotics to prevent disease,” Morfill says.

Last year saw the start of a strategic partnership between ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme (ESA TTP) and the European Trade Association for Business Angels, Seed Funds, and other Early Stage Market Players, EBAN.

The collaboration of ESA TTP and EBAN was designed to stimulate exchange between business angel networks and seed funds and selected business incubators that focus on transferring space technology and applications to more ‘earthly’ markets, such as the ESA Business Incubation Centres (ESA BICs) and the members of ESINET, the European Space Incubators Network.